Marie Ferrarella - Mission - Cavanaugh Baby

And then it hit her. What had happened to this woman wasn’t just some random, brutal attack by a deranged psychopath who had broken into her apartment. This was done deliberately.

Someone had kidnapped this woman’s baby before it was even born.

* * *

Detective Shane Cavanaugh frowned at the piece of paper his captain had just handed him. On it was not only an address, but a confusing short summary of the call that had come in to Dispatch.

It didn’t make any sense.

“Am I reading this correctly, Captain?” Sitting at his desk, trying to come to terms with the pile of papers on his desk, Shane read what was written and looked up at the brawny, bald man who had recently been put in charge of the Major Crimes Division.

“I dunno, Cavelli— Sorry, Cavanaugh.” The captain corrected himself with a mocking grin. “What is it that you’re reading?”

“This call came in from someone with Animal Control asking for backup?” It was half a statement, half a question, but virtually all of him didn’t care for the captain’s attitude toward him.

Captain Owens’s tone was condescending. “That’s what it says.”

“What are we doing taking calls from Animal Control?” Shane wanted to know. “Is business around here that slow lately?”

It hadn’t exactly been jumping with cases, but there had been some criminal activity, enough to keep him busy at least since he’d found himself partner-less these past four weeks.

“Apparently, it initially came in as a ‘disturbing the peace’ call.” Owens shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it escalated. The caller asked for a bus and backup,” he said, repeating what he’d written down.

“Just check it out,” the captain instructed, then added, “Unless, of course, you feel you’re too good for that now, given your new name and all.”

Paper in hand, Shane rose from his desk, giving no indication that the captain’s verbal jab irritated the hell out of him.

It had been difficult enough accepting the fact that his father, his siblings and he were not actually related to the family he had grown up believing was his, all because of an initial mix-up at the hospital where his father had been born. Suddenly they weren’t Italian, they were Scottish.

And now he found himself having to put up with snide remarks rooted in jealousy because when everything was finally cleared up, it came to light that the lot of them was not Cavellis, as they had thought, but Cavanaughs. Which meant, in turn, that he and the others were directly related to Aurora’s former chief of police and to the division’s current chief of detectives.

In addition, there was a large number of his “new” family who were attached in one capacity or another to the Aurora Police Department.

That made his siblings and him, in some people’s eyes, related to the reigning royalty.

It also made them, Shane was quickly learning, targets for verbal potshots.

While one of his brothers took each remark and the person who made it to task, Shane’s method was to ignore the sarcastic sentiment and move on as if he hadn’t heard it.

Eventually, he reasoned, those who felt compelled to make these remarks would get tired of the game and turn their attention elsewhere.

At least he could hope.

“I’ll get right on it,” Shane told the captain as he grabbed the jacket he had slung over the back of his chair and walked out of the squad room.

Getting on the elevator, he glanced at the note again and shook his head. He could barely make out all the words written on the paper. The captain had the handwriting of an illiterate gorilla—as well as the same physique, he added silently.

But he had managed to get the gist of it, although he still had no idea why someone attached to Animal Control would be calling in and asking for backup unless they’d encountered a pack of roving coyotes or something along those lines. Even in that case, wouldn’t this Officer St. James have called his own department? Why had he called this in to Dispatch, which then had decided to route the call to Major Crimes?

And why hadn’t the captain questioned this instead of passing it on to him?

Oh well, Shane thought with a careless shrug as he got out on the ground floor. He was happier in the field than sitting at his desk, staring down that mountain of paperwork.

Paperwork had always been the bane of his existence. It reminded him too much of homework, something he’d never really been good at. He’d always been a doer, not a recorder.

Locating his vehicle, Shane opened the dark sedan’s driver’s-side door and slid in behind the steering wheel. He buckled up, then, glancing into the rearview mirror, pulled out of the parking space.

He didn’t need to wait for anyone. He was checking this out on his own.

It still felt a little strange to be going anywhere without Wilson riding shotgun, smelling faintly of Old Spice and onions, going on ad nauseam about some recipe he’d seen prepared on one of the cable cooking channels that he was eager to try.

The only thing Wilson liked better than cooking was eating—which could account for why the man had no life outside the department, Shane mused. But Wilson had recently been approached about a transfer to Narcotics because they had a shortage of detectives in that section after two of their detectives had retired and another one had relocated to Dallas. He’d been debating saying yes when he’d been shot by a thief whose path they had accidentally crossed.

That had had not just one repercussion, but two. He’d temporarily lost his partner—and permanently lost his fiancée.

Better to find out now than later, he told himself not for the first time.

It still didn’t help.

Wilson would be back on his feet soon enough, Shane thought. Right now, he was going to just enjoy the fact that he was unencumbered in the car and that no one was chattering nonstop about the “rare herbs and spices” he’d used to prepare some exotic recipe and coaxing him to sample something that appeared better suited to a landfill than a plate.

Shane got to the apartment complex in less than ten minutes. The ambulance had beaten him.

Because there appeared to be no parking spot readily available in what was designated as guest parking, and all the regular spaces corresponding to the apartments were already filled, Shane decided to park his sedan behind the police department’s Animal Control truck. He had little use for people attached to the department who spent their days picking up roadkill.

A crowd was beginning to gather right outside the ground-floor apartment the captain had scribbled down on the paper.

“This must be the place,” Shane said to himself. Getting out of his vehicle, he crossed to the first patrolman he saw and issued an order. “Keep these people back until we know what we’re dealing with. Can’t have them trampling all over what might be part of the crime scene.”

The patrolman, a veteran of the department for twenty-two years, laughed softly to himself as he muttered under his breath. “Too late,” Shane heard him say as he was about to walk away.

Since his father, Sean, was the head of the day shift’s Crime Scene Investigation unit, Shane was exceedingly mindful of the preservation of any and all evidence that might pertain to the crime under investigation.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He wanted to know.

Rather than apologize or retract his comment, the officer explained his remark. “Dog’s been running through everything.”

Shane scowled, looking around the immediate area outside the apartment in question.

“What dog?” he asked. Before the officer could say a word, the incessant barking began again.

The officer Shane had confronted winced. “That dog,” he answered, pointing at the open door and into the apartment.